Meet Infy's highest-paid executives

BANGALORE: Any guesses on who are the Infosys Technologies top four highest paid execs? Chairman Narayana Murthy, co-chairman Nandan Nilekani, MD & CEO S Gopalakrishnan and COO SD Shibulal? All four wrong.

According to a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission by the Bangalore-based Infosys for financial year 2007-08 BG Srinivas, senior vice-president and head of the manufacturing business at Infosys; Ashok Vemuri senior vice-president and head of the banking and capital markets business unit; TV Mohandas Pai, head (administration, education and research, HRD) and chairperson of Infosys BPO; Srinath Batnihead (delivery excellence); and Subhash Dhar, senior vice-president and head (communications, media and entertainment) are the top five highest paid executives at the company. The list conspicuously misses the names of Murthy Nilekani, Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal among the top five.

According to the filing by IT bellwether, Vemuri and Srinivas took home almost four times that of S Gopalakrishnan as total annual compensation in 2007.

The two other names in the list Batni and Dhar received annual compensation packages of $316,207 (approx Rs 1.3 crore) and $248,316 (approx Rs 1 crore), respectively.

However, the total compensation doesn't include earnings like that from dividend payouts. Infosys had declared a dividend of 145 per cent, along with a special dividend of 200 per cent. Directors and senior executives hold about 16.94 per cent in Infosys. Murthy holds 4.99 per cent, Nilekani has a 3.45 per cent stake and Gopalakrishnan, 3.35 per cent. Another 2.52 per cent is held by K Dinesh, while Shibulal holds 2.21 per cent.

���At the highest levels, compensation has probably low relevance. There are several other factors that make up the overall reward structure,��� IT recruitment firm TVA Infotech CEO Gautam Sinha said.